


this is (not) a love song

by tentaclemonster



Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [34]
Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: 100 Fandoms Challenge, Implied/Referenced Blow Jobs, M/M, Mild Painplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 12:07:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster
Summary: Scott drinks and Lymond sings.
Relationships: Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny/Will Scott
Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [34]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1257083
Kudos: 33
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	this is (not) a love song

**Author's Note:**

> 034/100 for the 100 Fandoms Challenge. Written for prompt #76 – scratch.
> 
> Takes place immediately post chapter 5 of The Game of Kings.

The beer he drank stung at the wounds on his beaten lips as sharply as an assault by a thousand sewing needles would, but Will Scott was determined to leave sobriety a dead and ill remembered friend for as long as it took before its resurrection was once again a necessity and not quite as unwanted as it was right now. 

He was determined to get drunk enough to wash away his folly, to forget his shortsightedness, to soothe his pride, and – perhaps most pressing of all to his current mood – to also drown out the sound of the Master’s singing voice for, as unexpectedly pleasant as turned out to be, Scott had come to the conclusion that Spanish love songs were a style of music that, unlike drink, he could only enjoy in the most strict sort of moderation. His limit for them tonight had been passed long ago, back when the rest of their band of villains were still conscious and (mostly) sober. 

To ask the alcohol to do all of this for him, and the latter most of all, was quite a lot but Scott still held hope that it would be possible. 

Or, if that wish were not to be granted, then he would at least like to be able to drink himself to sleep the way the rest of his compatriots (save the one one singing) already had, but sleep – like deafness – would not come to him no matter how much he wished it to and so he continued to sit at the floor of Lymond’s chair, the back of his head rested against the man’s knee, while he drank despite the pain in his mouth and Lymond himself continued to pluck away at his guitar while crooning some verse about a dark and lovely sailor’s wife who came to tragic end after being discovered with another man after her husband returned home early from his voyage to sea.

Listening, because to do otherwise was apparently impossible, Scott wondered idly exactly how this constituted as a love song and what sort of woman would feel wooed to have a man sing to her about another man strangling his unfaithful wife in her sleep while her snoring lover dozed next to her unbothered. Scott then found himself laughing at the natural jump from that thought to the idea that he had unwittingly cast himself as the woman in his current position and Lymond as the wooing gent.

At his laugh, the sound of the guitar’s lilting strings came to an abrupt, almost shrill, end and Scott’s head was too fuzzy both from the drink and his own amusement to notice his long prayed for silence had finally arrived.

“Is that a smile I spot across your mouth, Marigold?” Lymond asked, his own voice quite slurred as he was rather drunk himself. 

Scott moved his head to look at him, his cheek brushing against the velvet fabric covering Lymond’s knee as it went. 

“Only if the belt that hit it had a face engraved upon its buckle,” he said.

Lymond’s mouth twitched at one end at that, the man feeling some amusement at Scott’s blithe manner or in reminder of his beating or perhaps both. 

“No, you’ve got a few bad scratches, I admit, but --” He put down his guitar on the floor next to Scott and his hand, large and ungloved, reached down to grab Scott’s chin, tilting it up. His thumb pressed against Scott’s mouth that ached like a bruise at the touch before it obligingly swept to the side and rested against Scott’s cheek where it seemed content to stay. “Ah – no, it’s gone now.”

“It’s no loss to me,” Scott said glibly. He ignored the drunk instinct that made him want to lean in to the warm grip of the hand that held him, but it took effort. “I don’t think smiling would be all that pleasant at the moment.”

Lymond made a tsking noise, the sound mock-scolding. “Now, now. You want to be an apprentice, not an actor, but acting is a skill that any young rogue should know. A smile is a weapon as useful as a dagger and an accessory that makes any dagger all the more dangerous, especially when you’re not quite in the happy mood to use it.”

“I’m not speaking of my mood, only my mouth. I think if I smiled, the stretch of it would feel like being beaten all over again.”

Lymond smiled at that himself then and his cornflower blue eyes glittered like diamonds in the dark with some kind of joyful menace. His thumb, no longer content to rest on the skin of Scott’s cheek, swept back over to cover his mouth again, this time pressing harder against his lips – hard enough that Scott drew them back instinctively on a hiss as it hurt – and there it pressed further still. To rest against the front of Scott’s teeth and then to the wet center of his lips where they relaxed from their snarl into a position more pursed, like a kiss.

“Consider this another lesson,” Lymond said, and rubbed his thumb in a wet circle that was at once as painful as it was suggestive and intimate. “Pain doesn’t always have to be an unpleasant mood to be in. You might, my pretty young Scott, even come to find that there are ways to make your pain something to enjoy rather than abhor.”

Scott caught Lymond’s meaning and stared up at him balefully. 

He was not, in all honesty, repulsed at Lymond’s suggestion because this was not the first time the man had made it nor was it the first time Scott had taken him up on what was being suggested. This was, however, the first time Scott’s mouth had been in such a mangled state and if drinking beer and smiling caused him to ail so, then he couldn’t imagine that using his mouth for aught else would be any more soothing to him.

Above him, Lymond raised his brows almost as though he could read Scott’s mind and was daring him to speak it.

He was like a cat that way, Scott thought. He liked playing with his food.

“Of course,” Lymond ventured, “I could just give you another song. There are some who say music can cause as much rapture in a man as any fleshly delight ever could, if not more. I, myself, have a great love for words both written and sung but I confess I’ve never experienced such a sense of pleasure from any of it, though there may be hope for us both yet. I do know quite a few more ballads, so perhaps –“

He made to take his hand off of Scott’s face – to reach for his guitar, Scott surmised – but didn’t make it very far as Scott, without even consciously making the decision to do so, stopped him by grabbing his wrist with a sense of speed and strength that he thought surprised him much more than it did Lymond who only paused and looked back at Scott with eyes filled with expectation and barely hidden triumph. 

Scott was not in a particular mood to agitate the wounds on his mouth but even less was he in a mood to hear another Spanish song and if he had to choose between one and the other, then the choice was not a difficult one at all.

Scott squeezed Lymond’s wrist a little viciously, the only act of meanness he’d allow himself, and Lymond grinned rakishly at him, his triumph no longer in check but clearly visible for Scott to see.

Scott paid it no heed. He brought the man’s hand back to him where he then let it go to reach for the space between Lymond’s thighs, to the bulge there pressing up against the velvet breeches that he palmed and squeezed with his own hand while Lymond’s found its way into his hair where it ran through it and then grasped it in a fist, pulling Scott’s head closer to him. 

“Oh, you’re a good, pretty boy,” Lymond praised as Scott reached up further to undo his belt, the second one to be a source of pain for him in so many days although he hoped this one wouldn’t be  _ as _ much of a pain as the last. “I suppose we’ll make a worthwhile understudy of you yet.”

“Yes,” Scott said patiently, slipping his hand beneath the waistband of Lymond’s pants, “and perhaps someday someone will come along and actually teach  _ you _ how to sing.”

Lymond opened his mouth to retort to that, but whatever clever thing he might have said cut off into a long groan when Scott wrapped a hand around his cock and pulled it out. 

Scott considered that this was the first time he’d managed to get the last word in on Lymond and counted it as a win.


End file.
